


Puzzle Pieces

by bette (ferns)



Category: Leverage, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Asexual Character, Autistic Character, Episode Tag, Everyone's a lil queer tbh, Fluff, Jewish Character, Multi, Trans Male Character, and also, it's a grabbag of things, let me live, this is purely self indulgent but people encouraged me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-08-27 11:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8400769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/bette
Summary: The one where Cisco is the hacker, Barry is the thief, Iris is the hitter, Caitlin is the grifter, and Joe is the mastermind. And they're on a mission to steal back from the people who think that they can get away with anything.





	1. The Future Job

**Author's Note:**

> this is so self-indulgent but redjayson on tumblr (hi) encouraged me and now here we are
> 
> every chapter is a coda to a snippet of an episode, although they aren't in any particular order. chapter length with vary and so will the content. the barry/cisco/iris is mostly just heavily implied, although at some point i'll probably cave and make it implicit because i have no self control.
> 
> (and everything timeline wise _will_ be explained. eventually. I promise.)

“Who are you hoping comes through today?” The woman next to Barry asked, leaning in a little to close for comfort.

“Nothing,” he snapped, before flinching and looking at his hands. “I mean, uh, nobody. I don’t want to talk to anybody in particular.”

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked, at the same time that Barry heard Cisco’s voice say the same thing in his ear. He half-shrugged.

“I just don’t like psychics, okay?” He muttered in reply. “They freak me out. There’s something weird about them that I don’t like.”

“Okay. Just relax. It’s not even real-we’re just here to see what tricks this guy has up his sleeve.” Joe rested a hand on Barry’s shoulder as music started playing. “That’s all.”

Desmond walked out onstage, waving to the audience with his chest puffed out. Inside the van, Linda raised an eyebrow. “This guy looks even more pompous in person.”

“Thank you all for coming,” Desmond announced, clasping his hands in front of him and smiling falsely at the audience. “You know my name already, Alvin Desmond, so I’d just like to jump right in since I’m feeling an energy already in this room.” He turned around. “It’s coming from somewhere over here.”

From the van, Cisco shook his head and leaned back a little. “I mean, at least he knows how to put on a show.” He tapped his comm. “Hey, Iris, you ready?”

_ “Already done,”  _ she said, leaning against the wall and checking her watch. _ “Do you have the feed from there yet?” _

“Gimme a sec… Yup. My baby works like a charm,” Cisco said proudly. “We’re in.” He grinned at Linda. “Now we see what they see.”

Linda wrinkled her nose and looked around, looking distinctly unimpressed, much to Cisco’s chagrin. “Why does it smell like chips and soda in here?”

Cisco shrugged a little. “Hey, a guy’s gotta eat. And it gets lonely in this van. I eat when I’m lonely.”

Back inside, Desmond turned around. “There’s someone else coming through right now,” he announced. “Is it… Fred? Or-”

“I have a brother named Fred,” Joe called, remembering his old partner on the force. “He’s alive, though.”  _ Or at least he was last time I checked in on him. _ “Well, he was last night when I called him. You trying to tell me something…?”

“No, no.” Desmond frowned a little, looking at Barry. “It’s not that. I must’ve been mistaken. It’s not an ‘F’, and it isn’t coming from you. You’re too shut off from the energies that surround us all. But he’s not. That’s where the energy is coming from.” He took a step in their direction and Barry tensed. “It’s definitely family. Is it your father?”

He paused, and Barry tried to keep his face blank as he heard Cisco murmuring anxiously over the comm.

“No,” Desmond said after a moment. “It’s definitely parental, but it isn’t your father. Your mother?”

Barry flinched, eyes flickering down to the floor. Joe narrowed his eyes at Desmond, clenching one of his fists. Most of Barry’s files had been erased, but he knew the kid was an orphan who had been bounced around the foster care system. Desmond shook his head.

“You were very young,” he said, voice dripping with false sympathy. “There was nothing you could’ve done.” Barry’s breathing started to get faster. Desmond hid his smirk. “I see… A house. A living room. And a knife.” He eyed Barry’s reactions. “Blood. I see blood. She’s on the couch? No, the floor.” Barry sucked in a breath through his teeth. “She’s been gone a long time now, hasn’t she?”

Barry whimpered and Joe moved to stand up as Desmond threw a final blow. 

“She knows that you feel responsible,” he said, unable to hide the edge in his voice. “But she wants you to know that there was nothing you could’ve done. You did the right thing by-”

Joe shoved Desmond a little in the chest, grabbing Barry’s arm and hustling him out of there. As soon as they were out of earshot of the crowd, he tapped the comm. “Iris, where are you?”

“Right here,” she said, emerging out of nowhere and wrapping an arm around Barry’s shoulders. Joe let go as the thief leaned into her, shaking and with tears dripping down his face. Iris exchanged a look with Joe as she directed Barry toward the exit. “C’mon, Bar, let’s go back to the van, alright?”

Linda shook her head from where she was sitting, surprise clearly written all over her wide-eyed face. “Damn. He really  _ is  _ that good.”

Cisco made a low growling sound at the back of his throat. “He should be shot.”

The back of the van opened and Barry and Iris clambered inside. Barry slumped against the wall, hugging his knees to his chest and staring blankly at the other side of the car. Cisco settled down next to him as Joe started the van (Cisco called out in a subdued voice for him to be careful with his baby).

They spent the entire ride in silence other than Barry’s muffled sobs and Linda’s muttering to herself about taking down this mark hard. As soon as the car slowed down Barry flung the door open and tumbled out of it, sprinting for the building and slipping through the door faster than they could follow him. As soon as he got upstairs he leaned back against the couch, staring off into space and trying to take deep breaths.

His fingers clenched into fists as he lowered his head down a little. He could hear them coming upstairs, he knew that they were going to ask questions, and he didn’t want to answer their questions. He didn’t want to answer their questions.  _ He didn’t want to talk about it. _

Barry had talked about That Night enough times with therapists and doctors and the police before going on the run. He didn’t need to talk about it again, not with Joe or Iris or Cisco or Caitlin or Linda or  _ anybody.  _ He didn’t need to talk about it anymore. They said that what he saw wasn’t real so why would they believe him now?

Barry heard the door open and closed his eyes as he felt rather than saw Joe kneeling down in front of him. “There’s no way he could’ve known that stuff,” Barry whispered, voice cracking. Someone squeezed his hand, and he automatically identified Cisco from the callouses-different from Iris’s worn hands but still there. “I’ve never told anyone.”

“Barry, he didn’t know anything,” Joe said, touching Barry’s shoulder.

“No, Joe, you  _ said- _ you said we’d find a trick up his sleeve. You said we’d find a trick,” Barry repeated. “We didn’t find a trick. We didn’t find a trick. He  _ knew things,  _ he knew everything, he’s really-he’s really psychic.”

“He’s not a psychic, Barry,” Iris said firmly. “He’s just a conman. A particularly assholeish one, but still just a conman.”

“He just did a cold read on you, that’s all,” Linda said, walking around the couch to sit next to Barry’s head. “He asked you things and then used your answers to guide him and narrow it down. It’s a classic grifter technique, I use it on the marks all the time.”

“But I didn’t say anything,” Barry sniffled, voice breaking.

“You didn’t have to,” Joe said, exchanging a look with Cisco, who let go of Barry’s hand and stood up. Barry watched him leave, vision blurry with tears. He couldn’t really tell what they were trying to explain. How could  _ anybody  _ read that much just off of the way that their face moved? It was so hard to understand people, they always acted different and when Barry tried to act like they did they said he was doing it wrong. How could anybody just  _ know  _ what a person meant by only looking at their face?

Even as Joe pointed to the minute expressions on Barry’s own face, enlarged on the TV screen, and Linda explained what each micromovement meant, Barry still didn’t understand.  _ How  _ did he know that that was what the faces meant? Wasn’t that sort of like being psychic in a way? To be able to tell when someone was feeling something just by looking at their facial expression? Linda and Caitlin could do it.

They must have been psychic too.

Cisco took over the explaining, something that Barry was grateful for. Cisco knew about how hard it was for Barry to understand people. Sometimes Cisco had trouble too. “See, he’s got all of these cameras. Scattered around the whole place. That’s how I was able to get that footage of you. That’s how he knew about the other people. He’s just another con artist.”

Barry wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Linda sighed and leaned back, crossing her arms behind her head. “So what do we do now?”

Barry narrowed his eyes and growled, “Cut off his legs.” He paused and considered for a moment. “And his head, too. Yeah. I think-I think I wanna kill him.”

“Me too,” Iris admitted. “I mean, I could-yeah, I might-”

Joe shook his head. “Nobody's killing anybody. Instead, we’re going to give Desmond  _ exactly  _ what he wants by making the world think that he’s the greatest psychic who ever lived.” Cisco opened his mouth, and Joe silenced him with a Look. “And then, in front of the network and in front of an enormous audience, we destroy him.”

A small smile quirked at the edges of Barry’s mouth. “That… That sounds good.”

“How do we do that?” Iris asked.

Joe raised an eyebrow at her, and Linda was suddenly very very aware of the family resemblance between them. “We steal his future right out of his hands.”


	2. The Experimental Job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyways there's Violence in this chapter, although i don't actually go over a lot of the really dark stuff it's still a Thing that happens and is there in the background

_“Did that actually work?”_ Caitlin asked in Cisco’s ear.

“Nah,” he said, watching Barry bounce away. “It was actually pretty terrible, since he wasn’t even watching last night and we almost got completely destroyed by that wizard, but the fact that he thought it would work- _that_ worked. Pretty damn well, actually.”

“Hey, dude,” Woodward said, coming up to him, and Cisco rushed to hide his fond smile. “You’ve been in the corner since we got here. What’s up? Something wrong? If you aren’t having a good time, you don’t need to stay here. I know how parties can get.”

“Oh!” Cisco jumped as Barry returned in a flash, practically throwing himself on top of Cisco. “That’s _prrrobably_ my fault, right?” He giggled and curled his arms around Cisco’s neck, making Cisco flush. “A guy can have his hands all over a girl, any girl, but the minute I put my hands on Paco here-suddenly, I’m a slut!”

“Ba-” Cisco tried to speak, holding up a hand to stop Woodward from saying anything before he could convince Barry to let go of him without breaking their cover, but before he could-

“You know what? Fine!” Barry shouted, much too loud and close to Cisco’s ear for his comfort, and then Barry was _pressing his lips against his_ and _holy shit, this was a kiss._ Yes, they’d kissed before, there had been that time at the wedding, but this time there was no wall behind him and Barry was squeezing his neck and he was pretty sure that his brain had just exploded.

Barry pulled away, beaming, and threw a wink at Woodward. Cisco braced his hands on his knees and gasped for breath as Woodward let out a small disbelieving laugh. Cisco didn’t miss the look on his face as he watched Barry saunter off, head held high. “Dude, nice.”

“R-real nice, yeah,” Cisco choked out, his brain still shooting off fireworks.

“You ever be willing to share?” Woodward chuckled, clinking their glasses together. “Boy like that…”

Cisco spluttered, searching for a lie. “I-no, man, I just met him last night. I don’t even really know his name!”

Woodward took a sip of wine. “Well, that just makes it more fun, doesn’t it?”

* * *

Iris narrowed her eyes as soon as Joe’s voice died in her ear. “Give me five minutes, Dad.”

“Five minutes?” The man sitting across from her-Sivana, hadn’t Cisco called him?-said, furrowing his eyebrows. “For wh-”

He didn’t get a chance to finish as Iris flew out of her chair, fists flying for his jaw as she lifted the table and sent it flying through the air. It was too ungainly to actually use it as a weapon, unfortunately, but she made do with what she had. Iris grabbed the guy by the throat, shoving her face into his. “We’re going to do things a little bit differently today, alright?” She hissed. “I ask, you answer. As of right now, I have, oh, four minutes to prove that your theory is wrong.”

“What-what theory,” Sivana choked out, lips already starting to purple.

“That torture doesn’t work.” Iris dropped Sivana and stood over him, scowling. _Nobody_ touched Cisco, especially not stuck-up rich white boys who used old money and had never struggled a day in their lives for anything except a suit that fit. “Now tell me _right now_ where Cisco is. You have one chance.”

* * *

Cisco bit down on his tongue as he was flung down onto what felt like a table, bag still over his head in a makeshift hood. The walk downstairs reminded him too much of Dante covering his eyes while they walked down on Cisco’s birthday, back before things got too strained between them. When they were still just two little kids who trusted each other. Cisco knew it was hard to believe-hackers were _notorious_ for being untrustworthy.

“All right,” Woodward said, but Cisco’s head was swimming so much he couldn’t really tell what the asshole’s next words were. All he knew was that it was stuffy inside of this bag, and this reminded him far too strongly of the kids at school that used to bully him. He knew that fraternities-excuse him, _secret societies_ like this one were notorious for being a little racist, and judging by the things that Woodward had hissed in his ear through the bag this one was no different.

He lay there on the table(?) for what felt like hours, although that might have just been the lack of oxygen to his brain talking. He dared relax a little bit, letting out a small sigh as he hoped that the others would come for him soon.

Which was why Cisco was so taken by surprise when something hard and wooden (or metal, he couldn’t tell) cracked down across his ribcage, making him double over as he sat up on the table with a wheezing yelp. Rolling off of the table and stumbling up to his feet, Cisco tried to judge where the next blow would come from at the same time as he attempted to punch whoever had hit him. The hood over his head became dislodged, and Cisco managed to squirm out of it with a small sound of victory.

It was fairly short lived, however, since what looked like a wooden pole whacked him across the jaw, making him see spots and taste blood. He stumbled back into someone’s waiting arms, where they held him up off of the floor (this was one of the days where Cisco resented being so short). Cisco had been beaten up more times than he could count, but that didn’t mean that he would ever get used to the feeling of being literally punched in the gut.

Which, of _course,_ was when the person holding him dropped him flat on his face and started kicking him. He curled up on himself and tried to cover his head, shielding his internal organs with his legs. Cisco couldn’t risk fighting back, since that would make it easier for them to pound on him, but he couldn’t just _stay here_ and let them beat him into a pulp, could he?

Cisco heard a loud cracking sound, but since it wasn’t accompanied by any more pain, he hoped that it didn’t mean one of his assailants had broken a bone. But instead there was another cracking sound, and this time it was followed by a wail from the person who had been kicking him.

Hands grabbed his upper arms, pulling him up to his feet. Cisco blinked at Barry, wondering idly why there were suddenly two of him.

“Here,” Barry said, slinging one of Cisco’s arms over his shoulder. “Lean on me.”

One of the people on the floor lifted themselves up onto their hands, spitting out blood from whatever it was that Barry had done to them (Cisco could see a broken chair leg on the floor-nicely done, Bar). “Nerd,” he growled, and Cisco decided that if that was supposed to be an insult, it was a pretty poor one. “You were never going to be one of us. You didn’t have what it takes. You’re a geek, not a dustman!”

Barry casually kicked him in the face. “Hmm. Do you think that he knows it’s the age of the geek?”

“I think he’ll figure it out eventually,” Cisco said, shrugging with a wince as he slurred his words.

Barry beamed and nodded, kicking the guy in the face again, this time hard enough to knock him unconscious. Cisco reminded himself (not for the first time) not to get in the way of Barry’s sneakers. He sighed and leaned heavier on his friend as the moved up the stairs.

“I think I’m ready for this con to be over now,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Me too,” Barry agreed. “But it was nice going to that party. I still have some food left over.”

 _“I heard that,”_ Iris said in Barry’s ear, making him smile. _“Tell Cisco to put his comm in so Joe can chew him out later. I can’t believe he almost got killed by a bunch of frat kids.”_

“Iris wants to talk to-oof!” All of the air was squeezed out of Barry’s lungs by Iris’s sudden hug as she ambushed them as soon as they opened the door of the fraternity. Cisco squawked as she dragged him into the hug too before letting go when he winced.

“C’mon. I think you’re gonna want to see what Cait and Joe have planned. But first, you gotta talk to a certain jackwagon.”


	3. The Two Live Crew Job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love this episode so much?? i had so much fun and i didn't want to stop lmao

“Don’t bother with the facial recognition stuff,” Caitlin sighed. “I already know who’s behind this.” She gestured to the TV, pulling up some files and rolling her eyes as Cisco wiped away a fake tear. “Leonard Snart, brilliant grifter, even better forger, although he usually works with his sister.” Barry leaned closer to her, squinting his eyes. Caitlin glared at him. “Stop it.”

“It’s like you’re haunting us,” Barry said, voice amazed. He reached out to poke her on the arm, looking stunned as soon as his hand didn’t pass through.

“Barry. You know I’m not really dead, right?” Caitlin raised an eyebrow before shaking her head and looking back at the man onscreen. “We used to work together. No, Joe, not like that.” Iris covered her mouth and laughed into her hand as she watched her dad puff up defensively. How long was it going to take for him to break the news that he had basically adopted all of them? “We were a strictly work relationship.”

Cisco clasped his heart dramatically, eyes wide. “Are you saying that you saw other teams before us? Why, Caitlin, I’m-”

“Nah,” Barry said, inspecting Snart. “More like… Another Joe, but not as good.”

“Poor man’s Joe,” Cisco agreed. “What about his sister?”

Caitlin actually blushed, looking at her hands. “Lisa Snart. Now, she… I may have been strictly professional with her brother, but…” Cisco wolf whistled and wiggled his eyebrows. Caitlin smacked his thigh and made him yelp. “Moving on. Snart never keeps a permanent crew outside of Lisa. Usually he gets a small team together, they do a single job with a big payoff and then they split. Sometimes they’ll do a smaller job first.”

“So that’s what this was? A smaller job?” Iris frowned and leaned back, drumming her fingers on her legs.

“Must’ve been. That’s probably why he decided to get rid of me-he saw me, and now that I’m, ah, one of the good guys, figured I’d expose him to the world and get him arrested.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “No. That’s not it. That’s not how Snart thinks. He wouldn’t use a bomb. He’s more subtle than that. And if he did want to get rid of me for that, he’d do it personally. It must be for another reason.”

“Because you know his scams, obviously,” Barry said with a shrug. Everybody looked at him, and he frowned a little, hugging his shoulders. “I mean… Who else would know how to take him down other than you and his own sister? Of course he’d want to get you out of the way if he thought you were a competitor.”

Caitlin caught her breath. “Of course. It’s because I know all of his cons, everything that Leonard, Lisa, and I ever did was a variation on something that he’d already done. Snart is a creature of habit. And he always, _always_ goes back to the same scams. There’s on in particular that’s his all time favorite-the Mona Lisa Variant.”

* * *

“I’ve got the auction house manager in sight,” Joe announced. “Barry, if you take his wallet and badge, this should be a cakewalk.”

Barry nudged Iris and slipped over to the edge of the makeshift ‘stage’, handing the man a drink as he slid his hand into his pocket and retrieved it. “Got the badge,” he said quietly. “Just need to get the wallet.”

Barry hardly even had time to blink before the platter was scooped out of his hands. He stared at his empty palm for a moment before spinning around, hand clenching into a fist as he spotted the person who had taken _his_ loot. It was a woman, in tall heels, with a pair of pearl earrings in her ears. She threw a wink at him and left, practically vanishing in the crowd. Barry followed her, making angry huffing noises as he went.

Back in the van, Cisco choked on his orange soda as the voice from the comms came again. _“I_ said, _who is this?”_

“Hey, ah, that doesn’t really matter right now,” Cisco muttered, “since you’re mooching in on _my_ frequency. So how about you go take a little nap, I’m sending along a nice little virus right now, mkay, _thanks.”_ Cisco curled his lip up as he hit _enter._ “Goodnight.”

 _“Wow. Your dinky little system is smarter than it looks,”_ the voice said mockingly. _“Any other one of my babies would be dead right now. Luckily, today I brought the big guns. Aeternum vale.”_

Cisco screeched and jumped as a screamer popped up onscreen, making Caitlin spit out her tea. “Switching to backup comm frequencies,” Cisco muttered, doing exactly that as he made the screamer disappear. “Everyone, they’re here, the other team is here!”

 _“Really?”_ Iris frowned to herself as she walked out into the hallway. She opened her mouth to tell Cisco that she hadn’t seen anybody-before closing it again and narrowing her eyes at the muscular man standing at the other end of the hallway. She sighed. “Found them.”

The man grinned, fingers tracing over what might’ve been a hidden gun, and Iris reacted. That wasn’t just a threat to her, that was a threat to her friends and to her family, and that was _not_ something that she could just ignore. So she pounced, remembering a little bit too late why she recognized his face.

Fucking Mick Rory.

In the van, Cisco sat back from the keyboard, mouth falling open. “I know this style,” he realized aloud. “This is… Shit. This is Piper.”

He jumped out of the van, leaving Caitlin behind him, obviously confused. She looked at the cameras and stifled a laugh as she heard Cisco’s voice outside. “Pied Piper. I heard you were in jail. Guess I was wrong.”

“Cisco Ramon,” another voice said. “I heard you sucked. Guess I was _right.”_

* * *

“My people don’t make mistakes,” Joe said firmly, proud that he could be confident in that fact-although it was somewhat of an exaggeration, since although they made plenty of mistakes they always, always tried to fix them as soon as they could. “They’re the best at what they do.”

“Then what happened to Caitlin?” Snart sneered, tilting his head to one side and raising an eyebrow. “That seemed like a mistake to me.”

Joe leaned forward, pushing his face in Snart’s. “Is that a warning, Leonard?”

“Just an observation,” Snart remarks, curling his lip up on one side. “You can take it how you want. And tell your little thief to stop playing with Shawna-her claws are sharper than they look.”

He sauntered off, seemingly unconcerned with the events around him and presumably calling the rest of his team to his side.

* * *

“Okay,” Joe said, clapping his hands and pointing to the assortment of faces on the TV, with Snart’s featured the most prominently. “This girl”-he tapped the image of a girl with dark skin and hair, eyes the picture of innocence (Barry grumbled)-“is Shawna Baez. I’ve chased her once or twice, she specializes in infiltration and pickpocketing. She’ll strike so fast you won’t even notice that she’s been there.”

“People who do stuff like that tend to be kinda… Unstable,” Barry said, tilting his head to one side and looking at Baez with a glare. He hadn’t stopped complaining about being ‘beaten’ by her. “They usually have irrational fears.”

“Do you have an irrational fear?” Cisco asked, looking at him.

Barry shrugged and Joe cleared his throat. “Moving on.” He nodded to the person underneath Baez’s picture. “This guy here is Mick Rory, a professional hitter, sealed records, not much to go on, but we do know that he’s done a lot of freelance mercenary work.”

“Mick Rory,” Iris growled, clenching her hands tightly into fists as she tried to burn a hole in the TV with her eyes. “That son of a bitch-”

“I take it you know him?” Caitlin said, scooting a little bit away from the clearly enraged woman sitting next to her on the couch.

“I tried to stop him from killing a dignitary with a mop,” Iris stiffly. “I failed, the dignitary got stabbed, and we almost killed each other. I had to spend a month in the hospital, and you _know_ how much I hate hospitals. So yes, I _know_ him.”

Joe interrupted by moving on to the next person. “This is Hartley Rathaway, otherwise known by his handle as-”

“Pied Piper,” Cisco said, clearly disgusted. “Major jackass, classic entitled white nerd type, you know the one.” Iris nodded in agreement. “Anyways, there’s pretty much nothing that he hasn’t hacked. You name it-the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA, SIS-he’s hacked it at some point. He’s a slippery bastard who got disowned by his parents, so now he’s got a bit of a vendetta against anybody with a lot of money. He’s a-”

“Thank you, Cisco. And last but not least, the only member of Snart’s crew that wasn’t there last night, Lisa Snart,” Joe said, cutting across Cisco’s angry tirade. “Caitlin?”

“She’s a bit of a jack-of-all-trades,” Caitlin said, frowning a little. “Mostly a grifter, but she knows enough to be a good thief, and if it comes to blows she can hold her own.”

“I’ll bet she can,” Cisco said suggestively, and Caitlin’s head whipped around.

“Francisco Ramon, so help me I will-”

“Caitlin,” Iris interrupted. “How is this gonna go down?”

Caitlin settled back onto the couch, grumbling. “Well, Snart’s always going to go for something flashy-a big distraction for a heist. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic, it runs in the family. And now that he has competition… Snart’s going to want to make sure we know that he was the one who pulled this off.”

* * *

“All out of tricks, West?” Snart smirked, eyes narrowing. “Face it. You lost.”

“I don’t know about that,” a new voice called, and Joe smiled at the stunned expression on Snart’s face. Caitlin grinned too as she stepped out of her hiding place dramatically. “I think he’s still got a few more.”

“Snow?” Snart said, disbelief clear in his voice.

“Boo,” Caitlin replied gleefully.

“But you’re dead,” Snart growled. “I went to your service, I saw your body. You’re dead. _Lisa_ confirmed you were dead. Did you really go through all of this just to set me up?”

“Oh, no,” Caitlin said, her voice cold. “And-and if you could tell Lisa that I’m alive, I’d really appreciate it.” She smiled a little painfully. “Would you believe that we went through all of this trouble to save you?”

“Now, Cisco,” Joe said, waiting for confirmation over the comms that everything was going according to plan. Well, according to the new plan. As soon as he got it, he nodded to Caitlin.

She smiled at Snart. “See for yourself.”

Snart looked over at where his people were being arrested and scowled. He knew that they’d be out pretty soon, but that didn’t mean that they were going to have a lot of good feelings about him once they were free. “And this is saving me how, exactly?”

“Well,” Caitlin said with a shrug, “at first I thought _you_ were the one who sent me that bomb-that’s how I ‘died’, by the way, if you didn’t already know. Maybe to keep me from ruining this job for you or something. But then you said something to Joe, which made me realize that you thought I was still a thief.”

“No reason to put a bomb in the apartment of someone you thought was still your ally,” Joe explained.

“Of course she’s still a thief,” Snart huffed. “She’s Caitlin Snow, _the_ Killer Frost. There’s nobody I’d rather have for a gig like this-other than Lisa, of course.”

Caitlin chewed her lip. “And… You wouldn’t have happened to tell anybody else that you were planning on recruiting me for this job, would you?”

“Lisa, and the rest of my crew for this job.” Snart narrowed his eyes.

“Once our hacker got decent pictures of all of them, it wasn’t too hard to figure out which one of them planted the bomb. We still had the security footage from before the explosion.” Joe patted Caitlin’s shoulder. She smiled, looking surprisingly happy for someone who was facing the boss of the person who tried to brutally murder her.

Something in Snart’s pocket beeped and he pulled his phone out, raising an eyebrow at the image he saw. “Well, well, well. Why did you want to kill Caitlin?”

 _“Come on, Snart,”_ Hartley scoffed. _“I had everything set up perfectly and then you wanted to bring in a new piece to the playing board? Oh, yeah, and she’s going to be_ the _Caitlin Snow? There’s no way I’m going to try to outcon Killer Frost herself! Especially since, and this is probably going to be a blow to your ego,_ she _was always the one that people were scared of. Not you, it was always Caitlin and Lisa.”_

“You know,” Caitlin said conversationally, “I have a feeling there’s a bomb waiting for you in you getaway car that’s very similar to the one that ‘killed’ me.”

“Do you really think someone like that is going to con me?” Snart stuck his phone back in his pocket and shook his head.

“Where’s your car?” Caitlin asked, glancing around. Snart nodded to a nondescript vehicle parked outside of the building. “And if we hadn’t come along and ruined all your fun, when do you think you’d be getting in it to make your daring getaway?”

“About now.”

On cue, the car exploded, flames licking the sidewalk and curling around the twisted metal frames. Snart jumped a little, although he tried to hide it with a burning glare. “That son of a bitch.”

“Well, he isn’t your problem anymore,” Caitlin said loftily. “But I still am.”

“Well,” Snart sneered, straightening his jacket and trying not to look like the explosion had ruffled him, “what do you want?”

Caitlin looked at Joe. “A deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're wondering if iris and mick made out they Did Not but they did get handcuffed together and traded stories.


	4. The Nigerian Job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hedgi motivated me to get my ass in gear with this and yes i know i promised i'd do the gone fishin' job and i am writing it ok i promise
> 
> at the end of this chapter theres an induced vomiting!! just a heads up!!

“Do you recognize any of these names?”

“Yeah,” Joe said with a small frown, “They’re the best, they-” He stopped and flipped back a few pages. “You got Barry?”

“Is there a better thief?”

“No, but Barry is… Unpredictable.” Nobody really knew where he’d come from, but the few times that he had been caught and given a psych eval they’d found a few things that made them take more than a few double looks into his background, which was just as obscure as he was. Nobody even knew the kid’s last name. The few things that weren’t obscure were his medical files and his mugshots, which were what greeted Joe on the page. 

He looked even younger in those than he had in person the one time that had Joe seen him, disappearing into a vent with a mewling kitten stuck down his shirt and a handful of jewelry clutched in his fist.

After that, Francisco Ramon was listed in a separate file. There wasn’t a mugshot in this one, just a security camera image of a man with shoulder-length black hair tied back in a ponytail, a cocky smile on his face and a hat brim pulled down low so it covered his eyes. There was a phone in his hand, half stuck into his pocket, and the design on his shirt was the protagonist of a movie that Joe vaguely remembered seeing a long time ago.

Under the  _ ‘Skillsets’  _ header, there was a long list of things that the kid (a  _ kid,  _ 23 years old) had hacked into, as well as some pictures from a science fair that must’ve been taken years ago-a kid that Joe recognized as Ramon when he was younger, beaming with gapped teeth at the camera. Behind him was a  _ gigantic  _ catapult with two other kids climbing on it, one of them stuffing what might have been a pillow into the bucket while the other waved at the camera from their perch on the spring.

Joe looked up, one eyebrow raised. That picture didn’t really seem all too necessary. The person who had contacted him shrugged. “Ramon can build just about anything if he gets his hands on the right tools. That’s something I figured you’d want to be informed about-the hacking is common enough knowledge among the circles you run with.”

Joe shook his head and flipped to the last file. This person already had a hacker and a thief, what else would they need-oh.

_ Iris Ann West. _ She smiled up at him from the page, a photo that had been published by CCPN a long time ago-she probably looked different now. Hell, he knew she did-there was a little scar on her temple that she had gotten last year. She’d told him when they met up that it was from a bar brawl. He knew better than that.

He didn’t even bother looking at her file; it wouldn’t tell him anything that he didn’t already know. Joe had been tracking her movements for months, which Iris hopefully didn’t know. (Knowing his daughter, she probably did.)

Joe groaned and shook his head. “I’m not going to do it. I’m not a thief, I’m a cop, or at least I used to be.”

“I know that.” The person trying (and maybe,  _ just maybe _ they were succeeding) to hire him said, shaking their head. “I’ve already got my criminals in those files. They’re all on board-or at least they will be once they hear about the payoff. People like that will do anything for money. I just need one guy, an honest man like yourself, to keep them in line. Besides, you get double the pay. Please, I’m desperate here.”

“None of these people play well with others. They have a reputation for working alone. Just because you get them a nice load of money doesn’t mean they’re going to stop picking fights with every rival they so much as lay eyes on,” Joe warned.

“I’m getting them $300,000 each,” the person said, waving a hand carelessly. “For that kind of money, I think they’ll  _ all  _ be willing to put aside their differences. Look, I’m desperate here, okay? I need those plans back. Are you in?”

Joe thought about saying no. It  _ was  _ a lot of money, pretty much anybody could use another $600,000 dollars, but… He wasn’t a bad guy. He was one of the good guys, always had been. Always would be.

But it was a chance to see Iris again. Talk to her without her running away, vanishing and reappearing halfway across the world in a blurry photograph.

“I’ll do it.”

* * *

“They faxed our prints to the state police before you woke up,” Iris said, leaning back in her chair and raising an eyebrow. “Thanks a  _ lot,  _ Dad.”

“If the state runs us, we’re all screwed,” Ramon hissed from the next room, panic clear in his voice. “We’ve only got, what, fifteen minutes, tops, until they figure out who we are and lock us up and throw away the key. I am  _ not  _ going to jail.”

“I can take the cops,” Iris murmured, eyes gleaming. “Soon as I get my hands on them-”

“Hey!” Barry yelled from the neighboring room, “you’re not killing anybody! If someone dies it’s gonna screw up my getaway!”

“I’m still handcuffed! I can’t even go to the bathroom, dude!” Ramon glared at Barry, something that Joe could feel happening rather than see. “And believe me, I already have to go.”

“Hey!” Joe called, loud enough to make everyone shut up. Iris huffed a little. She had hoped to escape her dad’s patented disapproving voice now that she was an adult. Evidently, she wouldn’t be able to. “Barry, get me a phone. I’m going to get us all out of here together.”

“This was a one-time deal,” Iris growled. “One time only, and then we part ways and I never have to work with you ever again. But I was  _ especially  _ not supposed to be forced to keep working with  _ them.” _

“Listen,” Joe sighed, rubbing his forehead with the hand that wasn’t cuffed. “I know what you can do, Iris. I know the things you’ve done, the people you’ve worked for.” Iris stiffened before Joe continued. “Maybe not all of them, but I know what you’re capable of. And I also know what they can do. Which gives me an advantage over all of you. Which gives  _ me  _ the ability to make a plan.”

“I don’t trust them,” Barry huffed loudly, rolling his eyes and stepping away from Ramon.

“Do you trust me?” Joe asked, already knowing that the answer was going to be ‘no’.

Iris, to his surprise, was the one who answered, laughing a little and shaking her head. “Of course I do, Dad. And they do too, even if it’s only for a few minutes. They don’t like it, but they do-Barry needs to move, he’d trust anybody to get him out of here as long as he’d done a job with them. Ramon, on the other hand, is just way too trusting. He’s going to get killed one day by that.” She smirked at Joe’s impressed and surprised look. “I know how to read people.”

“...Alright.” Joe blinked at his daughter. “Barry, get me a phone.”

“This is gonna suck,” Barry groaned, and moments later a loud gagging noise echoed through the vent followed by the sound of someone-Barry-vomiting.

Iris pulled a face at Joe, who winced. “I didn’t think he was going to do that.”


	5. The Grave Danger Job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i know i said that i'd do the gone fishin job and i WILL i sWEAR once it actually gets written instead of. all of the other episodes that wanna get written.
> 
> lots of claustrophobic stuff in this chapter, as per the episode. also my hand slipped and made it Even More Queer so. sorry about that. (im not sorry.) also at the very beginning theres a mention of doing unsafe things with shipping tape.

Cisco’s chest felt tight, maybe even tighter than it had ever felt, tighter than smuggled away shipping tape around his ribs, as he pounded his fists on the lid of the coffin. His knuckles were already scraped raw and bloody as he beat them again and again against the wood, tears streaming down his cheeks and choking him. He couldn’t die here, he couldn’t die here, he just  _ couldn’t. _

_ “Cisco?”  _ Barry’s voice said softly in his ear from the phone, and Cisco felt like he was going to throw up.  _ “Cisco?” _

“Barry,” he croaked, still trying to claw his way out of his wooden prison, “Barry, you’re all staticky, oh god Bar I don’t want to die down here-”

_ “Cisco. Cisco can you hear me?”  _ Barry sounded  _ way too calm  _ oh god please get him out of here. Cisco made a small moaning sound in reply, fingers scrabbling for  _ something _ to use to open the coffin.  _ “Okay, Cisco, listen to me. I need you to a deep, slow breath for me.” _

Cisco shook his head even though he knew Barry couldn’t see it. He was going to die down here he was going to die down here oh god oh god he wanted to go home please let him out of here, somebody, anybody, please-

Barry pulled the phone away from his ear. “Caitlin, he’s not doing great, he’s losing it-he needs you, you’ve known him the longest out of all of us, you have to do  _ something.” _

Caitlin tightened her grip on the steering wheel of the van. “Barry, listen to me. You have spent  _ way  _ too much of your life in small spaces crawling around. I haven’t. Cisco knows that I try to avoid small spaces if I possibly can-they make me antsy.  _ You  _ are the one with experience, the one who knows how to control their breathing and regulate their heartbeat.”

“I’m going to do something wrong,” Barry argued, hoping that Cisco’s sharp ears wouldn’t hear him. “You’re the one who’s good with people. They’re  _ hard  _ and I always mess them up!”

“Barry, if you don’t do this, Cisco could run out of oxygen long before we even know his exact location,” Caitlin snapped, trying to control her frayed nerves. Her statement may have been an exaggeration, but she knew that if Cisco was having a panic attack there was no way he wasn’t using up way too much of his precious air supply. “You need to calm him down.”

Barry gripped the phone tighter and lifted it back up to his mouth. “Cisco? Can you still hear me?”

Cisco writhed, trying to get the bindings off of his feet. Maybe if he got them off he could kick the lid of the coffin open somehow… It was unlikely, but he had to try. “Barry? You disappeared, I thought-”

_ I thought they had gotten you.  _ There hadn’t been any gunshots on the other side of the line, he would’ve been able to hear them if there had been, but there had been agitated voices. Barry and Caitlin. 

_ “It’s okay. I’m still here. There was just a-a bit of a discussion. Okay, Cisco, I need you to calm down. Listen to me. Take a deep breath in. Now let it out, slowly. You’re going to be okay. We’re on our way. You’re going to be just fine, Paco. C’mon, you gotta do this with me, okay? Deep breaths. You’re going to be just fine. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Deep breath in, deep breath out. There you go.” _

“Barry, don’t-don’t get off the phone,” Cisco whispered. The ties around his ankles were loosening by the second, something he was grateful for. “Please. I-I don’t wanna be alone again.”

_ “I’m not getting off this phone until we get you out of there,”  _ Barry promised.  _ “I swear.” _

* * *

Cisco realized as gunshots cracked aboveground, too loud even with the dirt and wood muffling them, that he was going to die down there, alone in the dark in a tiny box with nothing to do but tremble and cry and feel his vision slowly getting darker, the light of the phone growing fainter as his air ran out. It wasn’t the best way to go-certainly not the worst, but Cisco had always imagined himself dying doing something else. Pretty much anything else, in fact.

Cisco’s brain was so muted and fuzzy that he couldn’t even bring himself to be mad about the fact that having some sort of  _ shootout  _ in a  _ cemetery  _ of all places was incredibly disrespectful and disgusting.

_ “Cisco. Cisco, if you can hear me, I need you to take a huge breath and hold it for as long as you can,”  _ Barry instructed, sounding out of breath. Cisco did as he was asked, trembling all over as tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes.  _ “Cisco, you’re gonna be okay. You have to be okay, alright? You have to be okay. You’re gonna make it through this, you’re gonna make it through this.” _

Cisco choked a little bit, loosening the collar of his shirt as he tried to take another deep breath (he’d already let out the other one on accident while sobbing).

_ “You have to make it through this,”  _ Barry said again, and Cisco realized with a start that he was crying. Oh god no, no, please-Barry couldn’t be crying, that meant that this was really bad,  _ he was going to die down here,  _ he was going to die, please, he didn’t want to die- _ “You have to make it through this, Cisco, because-because you’re my friend, and I  _ need _ you. Do you hear me, Cisco? I need you!” _

Cisco’s eyes started to slide closed. He’d had an okay run, and his name was officially changed so there was no way he’d be buried with the wrong one. His friends wouldn’t let that happen anyways. They were good friends, the best friends he’d ever had… He wished he’d gotten to say goodbye to Caitlin and Joe and Iris. Say a proper one to Barry, too. And Dante… Cisco hadn’t seen Dante in so long.

He wondered, not for the first time but probably for the last, where he would be buried. Would they dig him up out of here? Would they just leave him down here? Would they take his body and bury it next to Armando’s and next to his papa’s?

_ “Cisco!”  _ Barry’s voice yelled in his ear, jolting him and making him hiss in surprise as the air escaped his lungs and he found himself gasping again.  _ “Move to the left!” _

Weakly, Cisco did as he was asked, and gunshots snapped above him, cracking down through the wood and piercing open holes that let in bright columns of sunlight and  _ oxygen.  _ He took deep shaking breaths, curling in on himself and crying harder with relief. The lid of the coffin was lifted, and somebody grabbed onto his arms and yanked him up out of his almost-tomb.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” someone-Joe?-said, and Cisco squinted in the too-bright sunlight as he was suddenly tackled simultaneously from both the behind  _ and  _ from the front, squashing him in a sandwich of limbs.

Barry’s face was tucked into his neck from behind, crying against his hair, while Iris was clinging onto him so tightly Cisco thought she was going to crack one of his ribs.  _ “Never  _ do that again,” she hissed, stepping away from him and hitting his arm, “or I’ll dig you up with my bare hands and drop your favorite computer into the toilet.”

“I don’t plan on it,” Cisco wheezed as Caitlin took her turn hugging him, smoothing his hair down and smiling at him with a tearstained face. “...Can we go home now? I need to-” His hands came up and he covered his face, shuddering. “I need to, like, de-stress for about twenty years.”

Joe pulled him into a hug, making Barry whine indignantly as Cisco was pulled away from him. “Okay. Deep breaths, kid, deep breaths.”

“‘M not a kid,” Cisco grumbled into Joe’s chest, the familiar argument making him relax a little bit. He sniffled. “I could’ve died down there. They were gonna let me die no matter what you did. That’s what they told me when they were putting me in.”

“You were awake?” Iris’s eyes were dark, and Cisco didn’t really want to know what she was thinking about. “You were awake when they put you in there?” Cisco swallowed and nodded. Iris growled. “Son of a bitch-I’m going to kill them. All of them. I’m going to kill them and I’m going to make sure that they  _ suffer-” _

“Calm down,” Caitlin said, grabbing Iris’s upper arm before she could take off running. “They’ll get what’s coming to them soon, I promise. Easy.”

Cisco slumped his shoulders and sat down on the ground, looking down at the now-empty coffin as he hugged his shoulders. “I think this was the worst day of my life.”

“Do you want to get some food?” Barry offered, rocking on the balls of his feet and looking about ready to take off at any moment. “We passed a lot of places on the way here, and eating always makes you feel better.” He held out a hand to help Cisco up to his feet. “We can all go.”

Cisco looked at his hand and took it, closing his eyes for a second. Not trapped. Not anymore. His friends had saved him, they’d gotten him out of there and they had saved him. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Alright. Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> say hi at cynthiareynxlds.tumblr.com


End file.
